By Ed Thompson

This is it, my last newsletter article. Over the past seven and a half years, I will have written somewhere around 173 of these (90 months x 2 articles a month – though we have typically only publish one issue of the newsletter in November). It might actually be less than that because we may have missed putting out some issues during the early months of the pandemic. (I can’t really remember what we did about that.) I have appreciated that you’ve read these articles, especially those who have sent me their comments – even the negative ones – because they meant that you were taking what I had to say seriously enough to say something, and even if you disagreed with me, at least I knew I had made you think.

I’m not sure which is the odder feeling: preaching to the Zoom screen on your computer or writing a newsletter article, putting it in an email, and then hitting send, knowing it is heading out into cyberspace but never really knowing if anyone will ever see it. (Come to think of it, the oddest feeling is preaching into your cellphone when the worship service is being held on a conference call.) Twice a month, I’ve been hitting send on these articles, often around noon or 1 PM on Thursday, occasionally getting them done on Wednesday evening. I may have given Amy a heart attack when I sent her my article on Tuesday, which is the deadline for everyone else and which should have been the deadline I observed but never really made except maybe once or twice. I can only thank Amy for her graciousness. She never complained about that, even though at times it must have made her job more difficult than it needed to be. She may have had evil thoughts, but she never said anything about it – at least to me.

I also want to thank all of you who have sent cards congratulating me on my retirement. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of retirement cards. There were only a few duplicates, which in itself is amazing. I was so touched and so overwhelmed by the number that I received at the presbytery meeting that I decided to spread them out and read only two or three each day. At this point, I still haven’t finished going through them, although I think I only have two or three more left to go. I know one of the things I will be doing during my retirement is going through those cards again. More than once I started to tear up after reading your kind notes. Those cards meant more to me than you will ever know.

By this point, I should have been able to have met my goal of worshipping with every church in the presbytery. I would have made it except I messed up. I had it in my mind that Mill Creek Presbyterian Church worshipped at 11 AM. However, when I pulled into the parking lot at 10:58 AM, there was no one there. The sign clearly said: Worship 9:45 AM. When I checked the text from Rich Cardot, he had clearly said worship was at 9:45 AM. That was discouraging, and what made me feel worse was it happened on my birthday.

This had actually happened to me once before in Kansas. Well, it wasn’t on my birthday. It was probably in February or maybe March, but that time I felt even worse. I had been scheduled to preach at the Solomon Yoked Parish, and I had it in my mind that their worship service was at 10:30 AM. Solomon is one of the closer towns to Salina, where the presbytery office was located. For whatever reason, I went into my office that morning, went over my sermon, looked at a few emails, and started for Solomon around 10 AM. I got stopped by a train, which often happens in Kansas, so I ended up getting there at about 10:25 AM. There were people coming out of the church, so I thought, “Oh, these are just people leaving after Sunday School. This happens all the time.” Then I saw the Clerk of Session coming out of the church, so I thought, “Oh, he must have some family birthday party or an anniversary to go to today. That happens.” Then I realized that there was a steady stream of people coming out of the church, so I thought, “Oh shoot, I must have gotten the time wrong.” (More likely, it was a word that sounds like “shoot.”) When I went back to the email inviting me to preach, it clearly said worship was at 9:30 AM. I had messed up.

I am grateful to the folks at Mill Creek and Tygarts Valley for changing their plans for this coming Sunday and switching the location of their worship service to Mill Creek so I can still meet my goal. I’m grateful also to Rich Cardot for being so gracious about my mistake because that was all on me. I have promised him that I intend to be there well before 9:45 AM this time.

That will be it except for attending the installation of Julie Olt at Old Stone Presbyterian Church this Sunday afternoon and a farewell luncheon with the staff on Monday before I hand over the presbytery’s computer, phone, credit card, and key to the storage space.

It’s been a fun ride. Thank you all for your support, your kind words, and your prayers. I do not know what the future holds, but I know that God holds the future – mine as well as yours – and I believe it will be good.